Weight loss became a necessity for Alice OQuinn when a knee replacement became inevitable.
OQuinn weighed just less than 300 pounds in February. After meeting with Dr. Kyle Ritter with HRH Othropedics and Sports Medicine, she learned that she needed to lose a substantial amount of weight before the surgery was possible.
In the beginning of OQuinns training, she met Keith Groppel, a physical therapist. She learned what exercises would strengthen her knee, as well as ways to progress those exercises for weeks.
The unique part of the training is that its done in water.
A nice feature about our pool is that we have an in-water treadmill that we can adjust resistance on, Groppel said. We started off on that with eight minutes, but the nice thing about it was that she could walk pain-free.
Groppel said the goal of using the pool is to allow the patient to adjust to doing the same exercises on land.
After being instructed to lose weight, OQuinn was sent to Pam Vidt, a wellness nurse.
She was my guidance, my conscience, my ego builder, OQuinn said. She does everything. She takes care of the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Shes done it all and put in the right direction for what I needed to do.
Vidt refers to OQuinn as her star pupil.
Through her work with Groppel and Vidt, OQuinn has lost 80 pounds.
Read more here:
Local woman loses weight, preps for surgery
